editorNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Anya Kamenetz is NPR's lead education blogger. She joined NPR in 2014, working as part of a new initiative to coordinate on-air and online coverage of learning. Kamenetz is the author of several books about the future of education. Generation Debt (Riverhead, 2006), dealt with youth economics and politics; DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (Chelsea Green, 2010), investigated innovations to address the crises in cost, access, and quality in higher education. Her forthcoming book, The Test (PublicAffairs, 2015), is about the past, present and future of testing in American schools.Learning, Freedom and the Web (http://learningfreedomandtheweb.org/), The Edupunks' Guide (edupunksguide.org), and the Edupunks' Atlas (atlas.edupunksguide.org) are her free web projects about self-directed, web-enabled learning.Previously, Kamenetz covered technology, innovation, sustainability and social entrepreneurship for five years as a staff writer for FastNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Anya Kamenetz Sat, 08 Oct 2016 21:36:55 +0000Anya Kamenetz http://wrkf.org
Anya Kamenetz "Do you speak English?"When Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng walked into his summer school classroom for the first time as a brand-new teacher, a student greeted him with this question. Nothing in his training had prepared him to address race and identity. But he was game, answering the student lightly, "Yes, I do, but this is a math class, so you don't have to worry about it.""Oh my gosh, was that racist?" he says the girl asked, and quickly checked her own assumption: "'That's exactly like when I go into a store and people follow me around because I'm black.'"During the time that Cherng, who is of Chinese descent, taught in an 85 percent African-American middle school in San Francisco, he enjoyed a good rapport with his students, and he wondered what role his own identity played in that.Now Cherng is a sociologist at New York University and he's just published a paper with colleague Peter Halpin that addresses this question. It seems that students of all races — white, black, Latino, andStudy Finds Students Of All Races Prefer Teachers Of Colorhttp://wrkf.org/post/study-finds-students-all-races-prefer-teachers-color
60689 as http://wrkf.orgFri, 07 Oct 2016 11:00:00 +0000Study Finds Students Of All Races Prefer Teachers Of ColorAnya Kamenetz What does it mean to declare that #blacklivesmatter in education?Last month the Movement for Black Lives, representing elements of the Black Lives Matter movement and related groups, issued a detailed policy platform denouncing what it called "corporate-backed," "market driven" "privatization" in school reform, and helped set off a furor over this question.Under the section labeled "community control," M4BL called for an end to state and mayoral takeovers of school systems in favor of local, democratically elected boards, more equitable school funding and a de-emphasis on standardized testing. The group also demanded a moratorium on new charter schools, on school closures and on out-of-school suspensions, which they link to the school-to-prison pipeline.The NAACP also backed a moratorium on charter school expansion in a preliminary resolution over the summer. It cited "weak oversight" of privately managed charters, instances of mismanagement of public funds, "exclusionary discipline"Questions Of Race And Charter Schools Divide Education Reformershttp://wrkf.org/post/questions-race-and-charter-schools-divide-education-reformers
60443 as http://wrkf.orgFri, 30 Sep 2016 10:00:00 +0000Questions Of Race And Charter Schools Divide Education ReformersAnya Kamenetz 45 CFR Chapter XIII RIN 0970-AC63.That's the official name of the newly-revised government standards for running a Head Start program.If the name doesn't grab you, this should: The Department of Health and Human Services says it's the first "comprehensive" revision of Head Start rules since they first published them in 1975. And the changes are, in a word, big.Or two words: "incredibly impressive." That's according to NYU's Pamela Morris, who's been lead researcher on a number of independent studies of Head Start.Why? Several reasons. One big one: longer hours.An extra $294 million will help fund a new requirement — that Head Start centers move half of their slots to full-time, at least 6 hours a day, by 2019, and 100% go full time by 2021."We felt that, based on the research and what we needed to achieve in terms of getting students school-ready, we couldn't do that in a 3.5-hour program," says Linda Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Early Childhood Development (ECD) at HHS.And,The Big Move To Improve Head Starthttp://wrkf.org/post/big-move-improve-head-start
60195 as http://wrkf.orgWed, 21 Sep 2016 11:00:00 +0000The Big Move To Improve Head StartAnya Kamenetz Oh, middle school. The land of pantsing. Mean girls who won't let you sit with them in the cafeteria. And, these days, cryptic taunts posted on social media, where parents and teachers can't always see them.Middle schoolers report higher rates of bullying and fights than students in any other grade span, and their academic performance also tends to dip. But, things could be a little better — if we just got rid of middle schools, according to a big new study.Sorry kids, I'm not talking about staying home for those prime puberty years. The study looked at the experiences of sixth- through eighth-graders in New York City at schools with different grade spans: K-8 vs. 6-8 and 6-12.In the K-8 schools, those tweens and young teens were the "top dogs" — the oldest, the most comfortable and familiar with the school. But, in traditional middle schools and 6-12 schools, sixth graders were the "bottom dogs."The researchers drew from an unusually large group: 90,000 students in more than 500Sixth Grade Is Tough. It Helps To Be 'Top Dog'http://wrkf.org/post/sixth-grade-tough-it-helps-be-top-dog
60140 as http://wrkf.orgMon, 19 Sep 2016 10:00:00 +0000Sixth Grade Is Tough. It Helps To Be 'Top Dog'Anya Kamenetz Ian grew up in Milwaukee, in an African-American family with five kids where the annual income was just $25,000. He was involved in sports and after-school activities, and spent a year working after high school to save up for college. He saw himself as a role model in his community: "They see me going to college and are like, 'Oh, he's doing something positive, he's breaking through the ceiling.' "Our college aid system is generally assumed to be set up to help students like Ian, one of six young people profiled in Sara Goldrick-Rab's new book Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. But when he enrolled in a public university in 2008, even after the federal Pell grant and a Wisconsin state grant, Ian found himself short $10,000 a year — the full cost of books, supplies, transportation, room and board.In other words, his unmet need, as policy wonks call it, was 40 percent of his family's annual income.Goldrick-Rab is a Temple UniversityHow College Aid Is Like A Bad Couponhttp://wrkf.org/post/how-college-aid-bad-coupon
60073 as http://wrkf.orgSat, 17 Sep 2016 10:39:00 +0000How College Aid Is Like A Bad CouponAnya Kamenetz New College Rankings Are Out: NPR Ed Rates The Rankings!http://wrkf.org/post/new-college-rankings-are-out-npr-ed-rates-rankings
59916 as http://wrkf.orgTue, 13 Sep 2016 10:00:00 +0000New College Rankings Are Out: NPR Ed Rates The Rankings!Anya Kamenetz They read a book quietly under their desks, pester the teacher for extra credit, or, perhaps, they simply check out and act up.Every classroom has a few overachievers who perform above their grade level and don't feel challenged by the status quo. A new report suggests they are surprisingly common — in some cases, nearly half of all students in a given grade."The start of this was a little embarrassing," says Matthew Makel, who researches academically gifted children for Duke University's Talent Identification Program.One day, a philanthropist asked one of Makel's colleagues, Jonathan Plucker at Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth, what should have been a simple question, "How many students score above grade level on standardized tests each year?"They couldn't answer. So Makel, Plucker and a few fellow researchers took a closer look at the data. Their results have just been published as a policy brief (not a peer-reviewed study) by Johns Hopkins.The authors studied statewideGetting Restless At The Head Of The Classhttp://wrkf.org/post/getting-restless-head-class
59887 as http://wrkf.orgMon, 12 Sep 2016 11:00:00 +0000Getting Restless At The Head Of The ClassAnya Kamenetz This school year, the University of Chicago has put the debate over "trigger warnings" on campus back in the news. The University told incoming freshmen that, because of its commitment to freedom of expression, it does not support warnings to students about potentially difficult material.But amid all the attention to trigger warnings, there have been very few facts about exactly how common they are and how they're used.NPR Ed sent out a survey last fall to faculty members at colleges and universities around the country. We focused specifically on the types of institutions most students attend — not the elite private universities most often linked to the "trigger warning" idea.We received more than 800 responses, and this month as the issue once again made headlines we followed up with some of those professors.Here are some of our key findings:About half of professors said they've used a trigger warning in advance of introducing potentially difficult material.Most said they did so ofHalf Of Professors In NPR Ed Survey Have Used 'Trigger Warnings'http://wrkf.org/post/half-professors-npr-ed-survey-have-used-trigger-warnings
59737 as http://wrkf.orgWed, 07 Sep 2016 21:12:00 +0000Half Of Professors In NPR Ed Survey Have Used 'Trigger Warnings'Anya Kamenetz The fall semester has just begun on most college campuses, but tens of thousands of students in 38 states were told today that, instead, their college is closing its doors.In a press release, ITT Educational Services announced it would close all campuses of its ITT Technical Institutes. The for-profit college system has become a household name over the past half-century. The company blamed the shutdown on the U.S. Department of Education, which had stepped up oversight of the school and recently imposed tough financial sanctions.The concerns about ITT involve recruitment and financial practices. For several years now, a group of roughly a dozen state attorneys general had been looking into allegations that ITT misled students about future job prospects and might have accepted students who weren't qualified for the technical programs they offered.The company hasn't been convicted of wrongdoing; nevertheless, the Education Department recently levied a series of financial sanctionsLarge For-Profit ITT Tech Is Shutting Down All Of Its Campuseshttp://wrkf.org/post/large-profit-itt-tech-shutting-down-all-its-campuses
59699 as http://wrkf.orgTue, 06 Sep 2016 17:54:00 +0000Large For-Profit ITT Tech Is Shutting Down All Of Its CampusesAnya Kamenetz For nearly a half-century, the professional educators organization Phi Delta Kappa has released a poll this time of year to capture the public's attitudes toward public education.This year, by far the most lopsided finding in the survey was about a controversial reform policy: school closures. By 84 percent to 14 percent, Americans said that even when a public school has been failing for several years, the best response is to keep the school open and try to improve it rather than shut it down.Yet despite that sentiment, some early research suggests that school closures may work as advertised, in that they steer students toward higher-performing schools.The vogue for closing public schools rose with No Child Left Behind. That federal law, in effect from 2002 to 2015, mandated that struggling schools be restructured, reopened as charters, or closed if they failed to improve test scores for five consecutive years.According to federal statistics, the number of annual closures fluctuatedAmericans Oppose School Closures, But Research Suggests They're Not A Bad Ideahttp://wrkf.org/post/school-closures-americans-oppose-them-research-suggests-theyre-not-bad-idea
59541 as http://wrkf.orgThu, 01 Sep 2016 14:54:00 +0000Americans Oppose School Closures, But Research Suggests They're Not A Bad IdeaAnya Kamenetz Let's say you have invites to two parties that advertise "free drinks!"At the first party, there's simply an open bar. At the second party, though, you have to bring in your tax return, fill out a long form, and register to receive a cocktail grant in a given amount based on your annual income.Once those funds are drained, you can then become eligible for vouchers to pay for further beverages up to a predetermined limit.Which party sounds like more fun? Which will be better attended? And which one is likely to be more expensive for the hosts?As this experiment illustrates, the promise of "free" can mean very different things in practice. And that has important implications for one of the biggest policy debates in education right now: how best to ease the cost of college tuition.Sandy Baum, a longtime expert on the issue, and David Baime of the American Association of Community Colleges, have just released a report from the Urban Institute focusing on community colleges. "CommunityParsing The 'Free' In Free Community Collegehttp://wrkf.org/post/parsing-free-free-community-college
59274 as http://wrkf.orgThu, 25 Aug 2016 10:16:00 +0000Parsing The 'Free' In Free Community CollegeAnya Kamenetz As a new school year gets underway, the Common Core remains a partisan flashpoint, while Americans overall have serious concerns about the direction of our public education system. That's according to two new polls.Education Next, a policy journal, released its 10th annual large national poll of public opinion on education today. And Gallup, the polling organization, has recently released new figures as well.With results broken out along partisan lines, the polls also provide insight into trends that may affect the current presidential campaign.Here's a roundup of key findings:Common Core: Like the idea, hate the nameEdNext says support for the Common Core State Standards, the K-12 math and English standards initially adopted in 45 states, has plummeted in a relatively short time. In 2012, the first year EdNext asked about them, 90 percent of those who had an opinion favored the standards. This year, the number had sunk to 50 percent."The decline in Common Core support is largely dueAmericans Like Their Schools Just Fine — But Not Yourshttp://wrkf.org/post/americans-their-schools-just-fine-not-yours
59193 as http://wrkf.orgTue, 23 Aug 2016 09:06:00 +0000Americans Like Their Schools Just Fine — But Not YoursAnya Kamenetz Garrison Institute looks a little like Hogwarts. The retreat center is housed in a former monastery amid tranquil green hills overlooking the Hudson River, 60 miles north and a world away from New York City.Inside the airy chapel on a recent summer afternoon, about 35 educators from the U.S. and at least five foreign countries are seated quietly, shoes off."Just notice your breath, the sensation of your air coming in, going out," says Christa Turksma, a Dutch woman dressed all in white with silver-white hair. She's one of the co-founders of Cultivating Awareness and Resilience for Educators, or CARE for Teachers.For the past nine years at this annual five-day summer retreat, and now within schools, CARE for Teachers teaches what's called mindfulness: calming the body and mind through breathing and movement, and using insights from psychology to better regulate your emotions.They do a series of role-playing activities to practice listening and conducting difficult conversations with aWhen Teachers Take A Breath, Students Can Bloomhttp://wrkf.org/post/when-teachers-take-breath-students-can-bloom
59060 as http://wrkf.orgFri, 19 Aug 2016 10:00:00 +0000When Teachers Take A Breath, Students Can BloomAnya Kamenetz To be human is to be constantly at war between our lofty goals and our immediate impulses.Future Me wants me to run five miles. Right Now Me wants a cookie.Unfortunately, that totally understandable tendency is one factor that can stop people from completing their education:Ninety-three percent of high school seniors say they intend to go to college, but 1 in 10 of those never apply.Between 10 and 15 percent of those who are admitted never register for classes.Of those who do show up, only 59 percent of four-year college freshmen, and just 29 percent of two-year college freshmen, actually get that diploma in a reasonable length of time.An unusual organization wants to change all that — not by the typical means, with money or mentors, but by closing the gaps between students' intentions and their actions.Ideas42 — a nonprofit research-into-action lab — designs policy interventions to help people make better decisions about their lives. Its primary method is through what's called Scientific Secrets To Keep Kids In Collegehttp://wrkf.org/post/scientific-secrets-keep-kids-college
58608 as http://wrkf.orgSat, 06 Aug 2016 10:02:00 +0000Scientific Secrets To Keep Kids In CollegeAnya Kamenetz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhEovwWiniY The field of educational technology is mourning a visionary whose work was considered 50 years ahead of its time.Seymour Papert, who died July 31 at age 88, was a mathematician and computer scientist who spent decades at MIT. "Seymour was one of the very first people to recognize that new computer technologies could be used by kids to create things in new ways and express themselves," Mitchel Resnick, a professor of learning research at MIT and a longtime colleague and friend, told NPR Ed."It's amazing that Seymour was thinking these ideas in the 1960s," Resnick adds, "when computers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he foresaw the day that every child would have access to a computer."The great theme of Papert's work and life was the nature of intelligence, or what he called thinking about thinking. As he liked to put it: "You can't think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something."Papert was born in Pretoria,Remembering A Thinker Who Thought About Thinkinghttp://wrkf.org/post/remembering-thinker-who-thought-about-thinking
58574 as http://wrkf.orgFri, 05 Aug 2016 10:00:00 +0000Remembering A Thinker Who Thought About ThinkingAnya Kamenetz How should schools best prepare kids to live and work in the second half of the 21st century?In previous eras, the job of school was simple: Teach them math and reading skills. Have them learn some basic facts about the world.Today the challenge is a lot different. Most people all over the world, even in the poorest countries, have much easier access to a calculator, a dictionary and great swaths of knowledge in their pockets.And technology isn't just expanding access to knowledge. It's also redefining opportunity. To put it bluntly, more and more people — in all kinds of jobs from truck driver to travel agent to lawyer — are in danger of being replaced by software on the job.A 2013 study from Oxford University famously estimated that 47 percent of all jobs are in danger of automation. And earlier this year, the World Economic Forum said 5 million jobs might be gone in just the next four years.These changes create a huge challenge for schools and teachers. But there are also some3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can'thttp://wrkf.org/post/3-things-people-can-do-classroom-robots-cant
58442 as http://wrkf.orgTue, 02 Aug 2016 10:00:00 +00003 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can'tAnya Kamenetz Think about our planet for a second. Earth has an elliptical — oval-shaped — orbit. That means we're closer to the sun for one part of the year and farther away another part of the year.Does that fact explain why it's hotter in the summer and colder in the winter?Lots of kids think it does. Lots of adults think so, too. And they're wrong.*Philip Sadler is both a professor of astronomy and the director of the science education department at Harvard University, and he is obsessed with wrong answers like these."Students are not empty vessels," he says. "Students are full of all kinds of knowledge, and they have explanations for everything." From birth, human beings are working hard to figure out the world around us.But we go about it more like the early Greek philosophers than modern scientists: reasoning from our limited experience. And like those early philosophers — Ptolemy comes to mind — we're often dead wrong.Sadler says that cognitive science tells us that if you don't understandThe Importance Of Getting Things Wronghttp://wrkf.org/post/importance-getting-things-wrong
58408 as http://wrkf.orgMon, 01 Aug 2016 10:02:00 +0000The Importance Of Getting Things WrongAnya Kamenetz At the Democratic National Convention this week, Bill Clinton gave a shout-out to a program called Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youth. In HIPPY, as it's called, parents receive free books, educational materials and weekly home visits to coach them on how to get their young children ready for school."Twenty years of research has shown how well this program works to improve readiness for school and academic achievement. There are a lot of young adults in America ... who are enjoying better lives because they were in that program," Clinton said.Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has been a champion of HIPPY for decades. She has made assistance in childcare and early childhood education a key plank of her campaign, including doubling funding for home-visit programs like HIPPY.A Clinton campaign video features Bill Clinton, in a speech, crediting his wife with bringing the program to the U.S. from Israel when she was first lady of Arkansas in 1985."She comesA Program For Preschoolers Gets A Convention Bouncehttp://wrkf.org/post/program-preschoolers-gets-convention-bounce
58294 as http://wrkf.orgFri, 29 Jul 2016 10:00:00 +0000A Program For Preschoolers Gets A Convention BounceAnya Kamenetz At the Democratic National Convention this week, Bernie Sanders announced that his successful rival, Hillary Clinton, had adopted one of his most popular proposals: Free tuition at public colleges."During the primary campaign, Secretary Clinton and I both focused on this issue but with different approaches," the Vermont Senator noted. "Recently, however, we have come together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that the children of any family [in] this country with an annual income of $125,000 a year or less – 83 percent of our population – will be able to go to a public college or university tuition free. That proposal also substantially reduces student debt."This proposal is novel. It's dramatic. It's a broadly scaled entitlement program for the middle class directed not at older Americans, like Social Security and Medicare, but for once, at younger Americans.So let's unpack this idea a little bit.First of all, what would it cost?InHillary's Free Tuition Promise: What Would It Cost? How Would It Work?http://wrkf.org/post/hillarys-free-tuition-promise-what-would-it-cost-how-would-it-work
58281 as http://wrkf.orgThu, 28 Jul 2016 19:59:00 +0000Hillary's Free Tuition Promise: What Would It Cost? How Would It Work?Anya Kamenetz A new White House report on student loan debt reveals that how people repay student loans has changed dramatically in a short time.The report comes as the Democratic Party moves this week to nominate Hillary Clinton, who has called for a path to debt-free public college, interest rate cuts, help for delinquent borrowers and a three-month moratorium on all student loan payments. Such campaign promises are a nod to big-picture debt trends that have loomed ever larger over the middle class for a while now.The overall outstanding student loan balance is $1.3 trillion and growing — as are average individual balances, as is tuition. The average return to a higher education has also never been higher, even when loans are taken into account.What's new is how those loans are getting paid back. According to the new report, the share of borrowers enrolled in affordable payment plans has quadrupled in just four years, to 20 percent in 2016.Still, several experts we talked with have suggestions forGood News On Student Loans ... For Somehttp://wrkf.org/post/good-news-student-loans-some
58160 as http://wrkf.orgTue, 26 Jul 2016 10:05:00 +0000Good News On Student Loans ... For Some